Un viaje hacia el pasado mexicano: Diego Cañedo, seguidor de H. G. Wells

Palamás, Echevete y yo o el lago asfaltado (Palamás, Echevete and I or the asphalted lake), Mexican Diego Cañedo’s second novel (1945), elaborates the time travel to the Mexican past. The sci-fi theme of the novel sustains a social criticism, and imitates H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine plot. In this essay, the sociocritical part of Cañedo’s work is studied, on one hand, because it seems to respond to the social problems of the period 1934-1946; and, on the other hand, because the relations established with Wells’ novel.

Analysis of Mr. Collins’ proposal: Jane Austen’s realism as a strategy for social criticism

Jane Austen's novels are a faithful portrait of many of the customs and rules of her time’s society. By depicting her sociocultural environment, Austen confers a greater realism to her works and adds coherence to her characters’ attitudes. She also employs realism as a strategy to make a subtle social criticism, highlighting the negative consequences of some of her time’s laws and rules. In the present article, a sociocultural context is offered about clerics, courtship and marriage proposals, and the legal device of the entailment, which will lead to a better understanding of the subsequent analysis of Pride and Prejudice’s chapter 19, in which Mr. Collins’ marriage proposal to Elizabeth Bennet is related. Through this analysis, the way in which Austen criticizes the precarious situation of women in her time will be explained, as well as its subsequent consequences on marriage engagements.

MURAL BUDAYA DI KAWASAN DESA WISATA AIR TERJUN GREMBENGAN, DESA BONGAN, KABUPATEN TABANAN

Mural is well known as a wall design. The community service was carried out by the IDB Bali Lecturer Team in Bongan village, Tabanan. The community service program in the form of community service activities that will be carried out is in the form of mural activities located in the area of the road to Grembengan Waterfall Tourism, Bongan Tabanan Village. The walls to be mural have a length of 40 meters with a height of 2.8 meters and 140.8 meters for the total area. There were moral and social messages in people's lives with a visual approach in the form of displaying local Balinese culture, and containing messages or social criticism, one of which is related to the pandemic. The mural image shows a boy wearing a mask sweeping the yard and the others washing their hands. It is hoped that this image can be informative enough for visitors so that visitors can get used to living clean and healthy. The mural is done using the conventional method, by painting it, so as to bring out the aesthetic side of the mural that is more expressive. This is inseparable from the ability and the results of the paint scratches that are displayed.

ZAKI NAGUIB MAHMOUD’S THOUGHT ON IDEAL POLITICS (From Social-Criticism to Liberating-Nationalism)

The discourse on political dynamics in Islamic (Arabic) countries leaves a debate that will never end. One of the Muslim thinkers who contributed to the concept of Islamic politics was Zaki Naguib Mahmoud. Although he was not as popular as other thinkers, in the context of Islamic politics, the presence of Zaki's thoughts made Islamic political discourse more dynamic. Zaki offered some criticisms and conceptual proposals for political discourse, namely a political concept that is not only oriented to the struggle for power, but a political concept that liberates, prospers, and always tries to build a better order of life. Zaky was here to oppose the tyranny of power and the hegemony of the majority over the minority. For the Arabs, the realization of such a political vision is not impossible, considering that they have a noble heritage in the form of a spirit of nationalism rooted in the era of their predecessors. It is this spirit that should be able to establish political order and liberate the Arab country from backwardness, decline, and moral degradation.

Pembacaan Simbol-Simbol Kesederhanaan dalam Film Pendek: "Antara Joko Widodo, Prabowo, dan Setyo Novanto" dalam Channel Youtube Najwa Shihab

This study aims to describe social criticism of the short film by dr. Tompi entitled "Between Joko Widodo, Prabowo, and Setya Novanto" which was broadcast on the YouTube channel Najwa Shihab. The research approach used Roland Barthes' semiotic analysis by reading the symbols that appear in the short film. The results show that the symbols of simplicity shown by the figures in the film convey a message that luxury symbolized by the place where a person eats is not always attached to the characters who are displayed and liked by the community. The mingling of the character with the community shows that there is no class difference between the character and the community. The forms of symbols that appear include voice and facial expressions depicting messages that have a meaning behind them and have a clear meaning of the message.

Religious Studies and the Values of Critical Humanism

This chapter proposes that a proper telos for the study of religion is Critical Humanism. Drawing on Aristotle and Charles Taylor, it explains how Critical Humanism provides a theoretical framework for studying religion and describes its mobile, liberal, dialogical, and inclusive aspects. Building on the ideas of Felski, Walzer, Rorty, and the environmental humanities, it notes how Critical Humanism places a premium on expanding the moral imagination and examines the connections between that idea and humanistic scholarship. That discussion leads into an account of four values to which the study of religion can be connected: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. The chapter then describes four works in the study of religion that exemplify these values. Lastly, it summarizes the chapter’s arguments in response to the challenges posed by Weber’s view of science and Welch’s reckoning with the field’s “identity crisis” as described in chapters 1 and 2.

Why Study Religion?

This book asks, can the study of religion be justified? It poses this question on the view that scholarship in religion, especially work in “theory and method,” is preoccupied with matters of methodological procedure and is thus inarticulate about the goals that can justify the study of religion and motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, it insists, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. The book identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, each of which it critically examines as symptomatic of this crisis, on the way toward offering an alternative framework for thinking about purposes for studying religion. Shadowing these methodologies is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that privileges value-neutrality. This ideal poses obstacles to making justificatory claims on behalf of studying religion and fortifies a repressive conscience about thinking normatively within the field’s regime of truth. After making these points, the book describes an alternative framework, Critical Humanism, especially how it theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship and offers a basis for thinking about the ethics of religious studies as held together by four values: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, the book argues, the study of religion can imagine itself as a valuable and desirable enterprise so that scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and avow the values of studying religion.